Before setting off our driver commended us to the will of Allah, and then said, “If it is so written in heaven, we shall reach Grozny no matter how much they may try to bomb or shell us. We need have no fear and we shall return alive. All is in the hands of the Almighty! If, however, it is written otherwise then, no matter what efforts we make, we shall be unable to escape death!”
We drove into town from the direction of Chernomoriye. The Baku Highway was blocked with wrecked military vehicles and, when we could no longer continue in the truck, we tried going forward on foot. Even this was far from easy: the roads were strewn with slabs of concrete, and burnt tree trunks and huge bomb craters obstructed us. The road had been ploughed up by the caterpillar tracks of tanks. Ruined houses stood like spectres, covered in soot and still smoking, their empty windows like blackened eye sockets. Some had been completely destroyed, and all the others had suffered damage of one sort or another. This once beautiful city, in which its citizens had lived their ordinary lives, was a pitiful sight.
We drove on towards the ring road, only to lose our bearings completely. I had quickly to learn new ways of finding my way through a city in which I had lived the greater part of my life, a city I knew like the back of my hand. We drove in confusion through its pathetic remains, working out which street was which, where the shops and the market had been.
We finally reached the city centre. This was where we lived, but now everything was wrecked. Our own street was unrecognisable. The Chekhov Library had been one of the sights of Grozny, but the imposing columns which had supported its pediment now lay on the ground and in the ruins of the building looters were scuttling around, helping themselves to the property of the republic. A little further on the Central Archive lay in ruins, as did the Millionshchikov Petroleum Institute, of which Chechens had been especially proud. It was the alma mater of dozens of graduate workers in the oil industry, builders and civil engineers. Schools Nos. 1 and 2, which my children attended, had been wrecked. Whole blocks of residential buildings in the centre had collapsed.
Struggling through, trying to avoid suspicious places which might have been booby-trapped, I finally reached what had been my home. The tall, slender poplars which lined our street were scorched. The houses of our neighbours stood there, empty windows gaping, bearing the scars of fires and shelling. The same fate must surely have befallen my own house. Its wrought-iron gates lay crumpled like paper. Soldiers’ boots and helmets were strewn everywhere. The courtyard was littered with cartridges and shells, the tattered rags of military uniforms, an intact hand grenade. There were boot marks everywhere.
It was obvious there had been fighting here recently.
Ours was a large house, built on a corner plot. We heard later that such accommodation was favoured for use as staff headquarters. Ours had been taken over by General Rokhlin, the cruelest and most irreconcilable enemy of Chechnya. As I made my way into the courtyard I was confronted by a dismaying scene. My husband’s library, his pride and joy, which he had collected volume by volume throughout his life, now lay scattered [...] in the grimy snow, some of them open as if their master had just been reading them and had laid them aside for a moment. The icy wind gently fluttered their pages. Blue, red, black, yellow, they were all the colours of the rainbow, but now their covers were torn, either by the wind or by cruel hands that had undressed them and thrown them out into the freezing snow. Vividly coloured sets of the world’s classics with gold lettering lay pressed into the frozen mud by soldiers’ boots and the tracks of a huge tank. I breathed a sigh of relief that my husband was not here to see this desecration of what had given meaning to his life. It was mainly his library that had made him reluctant to abandon the city and his home until the very last minute.
I stood for a long time in the icy February wind. The tears flowed from my eyes and I made a token effort to gather up the books. There were so many. The whole courtyard was covered in them, and I gave up in despair. I screwed up my courage and went into the house, trying at least not to tread on any books. The doors were wide open, a draught was blowing through and there was no glass in the windows. Even so, the house stank of urine, faeces and ashes. This was the smell not of my home but of a public toilet in the Brezhnev period. How naive I had been to imagine I would find everything just as I left it. Photographs from the family album were strewn over the muddy parquet, the smiling faces of my children when they were still very small had been stamped on by soldiers’ boots, torn in pieces, some of them charred, the trampled memories of our earlier, carefree life in time of peace. My eyes misted over. I was so hurt and saddened. I gathered up the pieces of the photographs of my children, my family and friends, and with the hem of my dress wiped off the dirt and the snow which had fallen on them through the broken windows.
It was perishingly cold in the house. The solid oak parquet we had been laid just before the invasion had been mercilessly vandalised, torn up in places and used as fuel. Someone had lit a campfire in what had been our reception hall. Our furniture, carpets, china, our video and audio equipment had all vanished without trace, as if a whirlwind had swept through the house clearing everything in its path. All that remained of the Meissen dinner service were two broken cups. I put them in a plastic bag along with the photographs as a memento of how life had been. The enormous fridge was riddled with bulletholes, perhaps in revenge for its capaciousness or perhaps for no particular reason. Its destiny now was to live on in this cold, dreadful place until the next looters arrived and stripped it down for spare parts. Further on I found a crystal tumbler full of cigarette butts. Pillows lay around on the floor, some of them torn, and the wind was blowing feathers all over the house. Silk sheets, soiled with mud and faeces, lay next to a soldier’s tunic and big, muddy shoes. I automatically looked up for the chandelier which I had so prized. It was still hanging there, its bronze gleaming dully, covered in cobwebs. They had evidently been unable to remove it and now its torn crystal festoons hung down grimy with dust and soot.
The walls were covered in appalling soldiers’ graffiti, full of insulting nicknames and Russian swear words. The soldiers’ hatred of those who owned this house was only too palpable. They had wanted to vent it by humiliating us with this horrible scribbling. I stood in the middle of our great hall in a state of shock, crushed and dispirited, and all kinds of thoughts came to mind. Why had I and my husband run around so obsessively collecting bits and pieces for this house? What was the point of all that now? Even then death had been stalking us, the fiery breath of war had been closing in on us. [...]
In almost no time at all the inhabitants of a beautiful city had been turned into refugees, homeless pariahs in fear for their lives. A fine, wonderful city – with unique architecture, splendid porticoed buildings, bright, babbling fountains and picturesque squares full of the laughter of children – now lay in ruins. Why had they murdered it? Why had they bombarded it with all manner of artillery, wrecked and trampled in the dirt this magical Emerald City that my children and all their friends dreamed about? Whom had it offended to deserve such a fate? Had it been punished for serving its citizens faithfully, for giving them warmth, light and water, a roof over their heads? For having sunlit streets, comfortable dwellings, orchards drowning in a tumult of green foliage? Why? What had this city done that these barbarians had been let loose on it?